406 Int. J. Indian Culture and Business Management, Vol. 14, No. 4, 2017 Copyright © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Validating FMEA and TPM constructs for SMEs in India: a structural equation modelling approach Sachin N. Waghmare* and D.N. Raut Production Engineering Department, Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI), Matunga, Mumbai, 400019 Maharashtra, India Email: waghmaresachin@rediffmail.com Email: dnraut@vjti.org.in *Corresponding author S.K. Mahajan Directorate of Technical Education, Mumbai, Maharashtra Government, India Email: skmahajan@dte.org.in S.S. Bhamare RBTE, Pune, Maharashtra Government, India Email: sunilsbhamare@yahoo.com Abstract: SMEs in India are facing challenges due to growing competition from large domestic firms and the MNCs and increasing customer demand for quality. To be sustainable in the market and compete with large and global enterprises, SMEs in India need to adopt advanced approaches in their operations. Improving quality is totally essential to sustain growth. Quality of production process means consistent and viable process. From an extensive review of the literature, failure mode effect analysis (FMEA) is one of the best current techniques to achieve high reliability and the goal of total productive maintenance (TPM) is to improve quality. This paper investigates the effect of FMEA and TPM constructs on reliability and quality of SMEs in India. A questionnaire survey was conducted to 473 firms and hypotheses were tested using a structural equation modelling (SEM). This study has empirically tested the effect of fault classification on reliability and TPM pillars on quality of SMEs. This paper provides guidelines for SMEs in India to improve reliability and quality of manufacturing process. Keywords: failure mode effect analysis; FMEA; fault classification; reliability; total productive maintenance; TPM pillars; quality; SMEs in India; factor analysis; structural equation modelling; SEM; India. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Waghmare, S.N., Raut, D.N., Mahajan, S.K. and Bhamare, S.S. (2017) ‘Validating FMEA and TPM constructs for SMEs in India: a structural equation modelling approach’, Int. J. Indian Culture and Business Management, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp.406–433.